Improvisational Comedy for Improvisational Comedy's Sake

Mime exercises

Mime: Weight, volume and tension are the key characteristics of a mimed object that help players and the audience “see” the object. If nothing else, be deliberate – your commitment to engaging the environment will enable the audience to accept any weird ass thing you do.

Suggested Exercises:

INVISIBLE TUG OF WAR – Everybody has a tug of war but the rope is invisible, the rules are that the rope must look real, can’t stretch or be elastic. Have a little miming moment: “Feel the rope” etc. We aren’t playing by actual tug of war rules; the point is to have a scene where we look like we are. We aren’t on opposing teams; we’re all on the same “doesn’t this look like a real tug of war?” team.

BUILD A ROOM – With everyone else watching from the audience, a player enters a room through a door (push in?, pull out?, doorknob height?, door weight?), creates one mimed object somewhere in the space, and then leaves through the door. A second player enters, interacts with the first player’s object, creates their own new object, and then leaves. A third player enters, interacts with the first player’s object, interacts with the second player’s object, creates their own new object, and then leaves. Etcetera.Lessons:
• With practice, mime work becomes instinct – So practice. When you’re engaged in an everyday action (brushing teeth, doing dishes, etc.) be conscious of your movements and the objects’ characteristics. Then try to mime those activities without the objects.
• Really picture what you’re creating
• If something’s not clear to you, don’t avoid it, feel the responsibility to make it clearer for everyone else

DO WHAT YOU DO WHERE YOU DO IT – Have a player engage in a mimed activity they are very familiar with in a space imagined based on their actual house/work/etc. Players from the audience get to ask questions that the player has to respond to in mime (“what’s on TV?”/ “what’s in the corner?”/ “Is it dirty or clean?”).Lessons:
• Leveraging your personal life will make being specific easy

DO SOMETHING TOGETHER APART – Three people up at a time and silently do an action for a couple minutes: Fix your space ship, save your favorite zoo animal, build an instrument from scratch, etc. The activities are mimed and there should be little to no interaction between the players – like they are in their own world, like a split screen.Lessons:
• As long as you commit, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing – three players can all be doing very different things and those activities won’t be in conflict as long as the players don’t address the conflict. Don’t know how to fix a carburetor? Fake it with commitment and everyone will believe you do.